207
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
3 collections
    1
    shares
      scite_
       
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Online Absenteeism and Strategies for Optimising Students’ Participation During COVID-19-Induced Online Learning

      Preprint
      In review
      research-article
        1 ,
      UnisaRxiv
      UNISA Press
      COVID-19, online absenteeism, participation, academic ethics and integrity, assessment
      Bookmark

            Abstract

            Since the last quarter of 2019, the COVID-19 outbreak has spread rapidly around the world which prompted the World Health Organization to declare it a public health emergency and, then, a global pandemic. To reduce the impact of the pandemic, many countries, including Zimbabwe, adopted strategies based on social distancing rules and stay-at-home lockdowns. These strategies had severe disruptive consequences on many sectors, including all levels of education. In the case of the education sector, traditional face-to-face teaching was replaced with online teaching and learning. Although online learning was a necessary intervention which ensured that students continued with learning, it poses some ethical challenges related to genuine participation with regard to both class participation and the completion of assigned exercises, quizzes and tests among other methods of assessment. Put differently, when students are part of online classes, it becomes difficult to tell whether they are in class or not. When using Zoom or Google Meet for instance, students may not have an obligation to unmute their audio and video tools during classes. Second, when assignments and tests are administered and completed online, it is difficult to tell whether students have honestly completed the assigned work on their own or whether third parties were involved.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            UnisaRxiv
            UNISA Press
            12 July 2022
            Affiliations
            [1 ] Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
            Author notes
            Author information
            https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3186-339X
            Article
            10.25159/UnisaRxiv/000040.v1
            ca2c4bc6-8023-4ab4-9525-5461f3e57cd6

            This work has been published open access under Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0 , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Conditions, terms of use and publishing policy can be found at www.scienceopen.com .

            History
            : 12 July 2022
            : 19 July 2022

            The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
            Education,Literary studies,Linguistics & Semiotics,Arts
            academic ethics and integrity,online absenteeism,assessment,participation,COVID-19

            Comments

            Comment on this article